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Dr Caroline Leaf and the tongues trivia tall tales trifecta

I saw a Facebook factoid from Caroline Leaf today that said, “When we speak in tongues, research shows that the areas involved in discernment in the brain increase in activity, which means we increase in wisdom.”

Dr Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and a self-titled cognitive neuroscientist. She has also proclaimed herself as an expert on science and the Bible.

In the opening of her “Scientific Philosophy”, for example, Dr Leaf says that, “God is the Creator of the Universe and is the Author of Science. Since God is the Author of the Bible, the Bible is therefore the ultimate authority in any scientific matters. The study of Science is therefore the study of God’s handiwork and is a way of admiring His Creation. God, the Creator, is the One to be worshipped, not the Creation. The Creation, however, reflects the Glory of God and points to His Divine attributes.”

In order to prove that the Bible is the ultimate scientific authority, Dr Leaf attempts to find scientific studies which support Biblical concepts. One example of this is her teaching on Glossolalia, the scientific term for the Biblical concept ‘speaking in tongues’.

Dr Leaf’s Facebook factoid on the neuroscience of speaking in tongues is at least the second time she has posted it. In November when I first saw Dr Leaf’s proclamation on the science of speaking in tongues, I was fascinated. I went to find the research for myself to see if the areas involved in discernment in the brain really increase in activity when speaking in tongues. As it turns out, there isn’t any.

The only study that I could find about brain functioning during speaking in tongues was by Newberg [1]. As I wrote in my previous blog, the study by Newberg showed the part of the brain that’s involved in both speaking in tongues and discernment, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, decreases in activity when praying in tongues, not increases, in direct contradiction to Dr Leaf’s meme.

In November, I concluded, “there are really only two reasonable explanations as to why the research contradicts Dr Leaf; either there is another piece of research which supports Dr Leaf’s assertion, or Dr Leaf is simply wrong.”

Today on Facebook, Dr Leaf demonstrated that she can not be swayed from her entrenched idea that speaking in tongues increases discernment … or can she? Her meme and her discussion on glossolalia in her ‘Scientific Philosophy’ seem contradictory.

For example, she writes in her scientific philosophy manifesto, “In 2006 Dr. Andrew Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania, using single-photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT), found that the frontal lobe of individuals who spoke in tongues was less active. This brain profile was in contrast to Franciscan nuns in contemplative prayer and Buddhist monks in meditation, in which frontal lobe activity is increased. Since the frontal lobe activity is increased when we are focused on what we are saying, this finding confirms self-reports of what people who spoke in tongues experienced, implying that the words spoken in glossolalia originate from a source other than the mind of the individual speaking in tongues.”

In this paragraph, Dr Leaf confirms that frontal lobe activity decreases when speaking in tongues, in keeping with her anecdotal evidence of “self-reports of what people who spoke in tongues experienced, implying that the words spoken in glossolalia originate from a source other than the mind of the individual speaking in tongues.” But this is in direct contrast with her social media meme, which suggests that speaking in tongues increases frontal lobe activity – the area of the brain common to glossolalia and discernment is the vmPFC, which decreases with glossolalia and increases with discernment.

Dr Leaf is a confusing enigma. She posts social media memes that are clearly wrong, even disagreeing with the scientific papers she has written about and her own conclusions in her own manifesto.

This only discounts her legitimacy. You can’t continue to contradict your own evidence. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot, or digging your own grave. What’s worse, Dr Leaf teaches this from real pulpits, not just on social media. How is her audience supposed to feel when they hear what she has to say and find it disagrees with her own scientific philosophy?

I sound like a broken record, but Dr Leaf desperately needs to review her teaching and social media memes. It’s bad enough to be contradicted by scientific evidence, but to be in disagreement with your own teaching is embarrassing, and does nothing to preserve trust with your audience.